AppleInsider Staff
Popular health tracking service and iOS app MyFitnessPal has been acquired by clothing maker Under Armour for nearly a half-billion dollars, while iOS 8 custom keyboard SwiftKey has added predictive emoji entry, and WhatsApp Messenger has been updated with a new quick camera button.
Under Armour buys MyFitnessPal, Endomondo
Under Armour announced this week that it has acquired San Francisco-based MyFitnessPal for $475 million. The health and nutrition service, which has a widely used iOS application, boasts more than 80 million registered users.
The acquisition brings MyFitnessPal into Under Armour's existing lineup of mobile applications, including the MapMyFitness product. The company also revealed this week that it has acquired open fitness tracking platform Endomondo, also an iOS app, for $85 million.
As of Thursday, MyFitnessPal's "Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker" application is the No. 1 free download in the Health & Fitness section on the iPhone App Store. Under Armor's Map My Run application ranks in 10th place.
"Similar to MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal have established track records of unmatched equity, expertise and passion in the fitness and nutrition space, and they are ideal partners to enable Under Armour to provide data-driven, proactive solutions to help athletes of all levels lead healthier and more active lifestyles," said Kevin Plank, chairman and CEO of Under Armour.
SwiftKey for iOS 8 adds predictive emoji support
SwiftKey Keyboard, the popular third-party text entry tool for iOS 8, was updated Thursday with more than 800 emoji choices. The predictive keyboard can also learn emoji entry and automatically enter it, just like with traditional words.
Version 1.2 also adds SwiftKey Flow for iPad, allowing users to type by swiping from letter to letter. Users can also accompany each tap of a key with a click noise if they choose.
The update also includes 11 new languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Hinglish, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, and Turkish.
Finally, the latest SwiftKey software also includes general bug fixes and layout improvements.
WhatsApp gains quick camera button, Dynamic Type support
Popular Facebook-owned messenger WhatsApp was also updated this week to add a quick camera button in chat. The new feature lets users quickly choose a recent camera roll photo to send.
The WhatsApp Messenger update also adds support for Dynamic Type variable font sizes built in to iOS. Customizable font sizes can be seen throughout the app thanks to the new update.
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Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
14 Comments
I hope this app is worth half a billion dollars for them ...
[quote name="jj.yuan" url="/t/184653/under-armour-buys-myfitnesspal-for-475m-swiftkey-update-adds-predictive-emojis-to-ios-8-keyboard#post_2671693"]I hope this app is worth half a billion dollars for them ...:rolleyes: [/quote] Well obviously time will tell. To me it t shows a level of confidence in ?Watch and health related moves by Apple. I suspect we will see from many others in the next few months. I am cautious about going on permanent record with roll eyes with anything related to potential success in an Apple endeavor, but that's just me.
I really wish Apple had acquired MFP. The interface leaves a little to be desired, but as a whole it's the only calorie tracker that actually works. The database has every food ever. The barcode scanning works perfectly. It integrates with basically every other fitness app and service that exists.
[quote name="jakeb" url="/t/184653/under-armour-buys-myfitnesspal-for-475m-swiftkey-update-adds-predictive-emojis-to-ios-8-keyboard#post_2671710"]I really wish Apple had acquired MFP. The interface leaves a little to be desired, but as a whole it's the only calorie tracker that actually works. The database has every food ever. The barcode scanning works perfectly. It integrates with basically every other fitness app and service that exists.[/quote] Be it ?Watch, iPhone, iPad or Mac, it's a tough call to know if Apple having the best app is ideal for Apple's hardware sales or lots of competing companies having a crack at the title is wiser. In areas such as music and video Apple did go that route but not in all (I will refrain from ranting about photography) perhaps fitness is best as not being dominated by an Apple product as such. Mind you in the IT / Healthcare area I hope IBM/Apple do dominate and destroy and competition.
I hope this app is worth half a billion dollars for them ...
With 80 million registered users they only need to get each user to spend $6 on average to more than make back the $475 million invested.
Most of these stories I read don't make much sense to me because I have no idea where they make their money.
On the other hand - even if you only made $0.01 per day per user times 80 million users over the course of a year that is nearly $300 million/year.